Perhaps a little mud season break from politics will be welcome. Vermont may be called the King of Maple Syrup with an output of 3 million gallons of syrup produced in 2014. But according to the Washington Post more people prefer fake to the real thing.
Fake maple syrup resembles real maple syrup about as much as Velveeta resembles a good Camembert. But when I asked 1,000 Americans which they preferred on their pancakes, the artificial brands won out big time.
Just over 25 percent of respondents to an online Google Consumer Survey panel said that real maple syrup was their pancake topper of choice. Seventy percent chose either Aunt Jemima, Mrs. Butterworth's, Log Cabin or Hungry Jack, while another three percent chose something else.
They speculate the preference for fake probably has to do with high cost — hopefully not flavor. Mostly it is that a gallon of fake syrup goes for about eight dollars (at WalMart), a far cry from the forty to sixty dollars a gallon the labor-intensive genuine maple syrup costs.
So it is mostly about price and availability, although marketing, accessibility, and culture may be additional factors. So there you have it: Not everything boils down to politics.
What they know is corn syrup “flavored” with unlikely but effective additives like coal tar.
The corn marketing board has made certain that the majority of products people come to associate with comfort are heavily corn-dependent.
Mono-crop corn is the cheapest starch or sweet constituent of any packaged product.
I predict that someone will eventually discover that Americans are chemically addicted to the stuff.
(Monsanto simply leers and twirls a fake licorice mustache.)
corn is one of the highest users of GMOs. When attempting to weed out GMOs on a small food budget, one tip I received was a list of the most heavily used sources of GMO. Corn and soy are high on the list.
Consequently I use very few products that are GMO-happy. Some if not all organic producers do not use GMO however the devil is in the details and alot seems to skirt the ‘rules’.
HFCS as well as cane sugar – the heroin of sweeteners – are amongst the worst ‘foods’ one can ingest. Eliminating high glycemic index foods breaks the hunger-pang cycle. Upon cracking the by studying this breakthrough I actually became anorexic (not the disorder just loss of appetite). Sugars also wreak havoc w/pancreas, I personally believe all the sugars we ingest from cradle to grave (baby formulas – home made ones used corn syrup) are a leading cause of diabetes.
Replacing that garbage w/salads containing nutrient-dense healthy ingedients ( mozzarella, meats, eggs and whatever) and making it a meal which even a few evil croutons can be safely tossed in is a healthy lifechanging experience. But I’m still not behind ‘sugary drinks’ tax/ban as ppl must be educated to make the choice themselves. I know many ppl who eat that garbage their logic if it can be categorized thusly is: ‘we are going to die of something’ [???] True. But being healthy until one expires is my logic.
But I digress. And yes I do believe either HFCS is addicting and is in a dead heat for which is worse w/cane, and the added GMO is addicting. I personally cannot stand the stuff even the consistancy is a harrowing experience. The phony buttery taste is probably as culpable in addicting and health-destruction as the rest of it.
When we had money before the shakedown of the middle class and job loss ‘other’ used it in coffee, he’s actually an addict. Now it’s just for ice cream & yogurt. I do not partake of added sweeteners as it then sets the carb-adddiction mechanism in motion.
He did resort to AJ or VM during some of our harder times but if I see it I toss it.
I must say I was rather stunned at these findings. The fake maples listed are like Cremora to half & half.
One day in Price Chopper we tried to shop for what was on our list without buying any products containing corn or corn-derived ingredients. What a QUEST!
Corn-derived ingredients show up in many surprising places. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank then FDA Commissioner David Kessler for pushing through the first mandate to include ingredient labels. As I recall, it was a battle…